Visions in the Dark

After remembering no dreams for many months, I finally have not only a dream, but a long and detailed dream.


This dream starts off in a huge grocery store filled with fresh produce. Some of the aisles and sections of the store are dirt patches that are growing the actual produce. There are many young people working the fields and organizing the aisles as the place has just opened for the first time. The owner, a middle aged man in deniem overalls and a green plaid shirt is at the entrance of the store brainstorming several ideas about making this unique store more accessable and interactive with customers, like letting them harvest their own produce and things like that. There were many interesting and varied ideas but I have forgotten what most of them were.

I enter the store and beeline for the potatoe patch near the front. I have a basket with me and fill it with dirt and then place a line of potatoes, slanted diagonally, on the top, before coving them with dirt. I head for the cola aisle but I cannot get through because many cases of cola have fallen on the floor in a big pile and are blocking the way. All of the cola cases were coloured purple but it was diet colda, not grape cola, that were in the boxes. A bored looking young man is there slowing restacking the boxes but he seems very unenthusiastic about his job and ignores me when I ask if there is another way to get around the pile.

I head back to the front of the store to look at some more vegatables but something happens (I cannot remember what now) which triggers by post-traumatic stress and I fall on my back to the floor. I am conscious, but paralyzed with fear and unresponsive to the curious crowd that gathers around me. No one makes any effort to help me and one young man takes a picture with his camera phone before two young woman enter the store, see what is going on, and carry me to a more secluded spot to recover. I can hear them talking and for some reason they know exactly what has happened to me and know all about my past and post-traumatic stress. One of the young woman is dressed in a "goth" style while the other is dressed like a punk rocker. Though I do not recognize them from anyone I know in real life, in the dream I felt very close to them like I had known them for a long time.

The dream scene changes and it is suddenly night time and we are on a hill, under a broken and abandoned railway bridge in a small town that I do not recognize. The two girls and I are still together but we have grown younger by about eight to ten years and are now children, even though we are still dressed the same. The three of us are street children and are playing amdist the abandoned scaffolding once put up in an effort to repair the bridge, a project long since abandoned. We are not the ony homeless children in the area as there are many running around, but my two friends and I are "new" and don't really know any of the other children yet. Despite being alone in the dark, we are playing carefree. I am on the hill, under some scaffording near the traintracks when a bright light down the tracks catches my attention. I can see the headlight of a large locomotive making its way over the horizon towards the broken bridge. I can see the outline of a long train behind the light, can hear the rumble of the engine, and feel the shaking of the ground, but no one else can see the train and they continue to play as if nothing is there. I become terrified and my post-traumatic stress kicks in and I fall to the ground paralyzed with fear like I did back in the farm grocery store. I do not consciously think it in the dream but I can sense that the approaching ghost train represents something dark from my past and that is what triggers my pts, not the thought of the trains crashing on the broken bridge.

Some children gather around me, including my two friends, but this time they do not realize what is wrong with me. They try to rouse me with teasing and stuff but I am completely paraylayzed, though I am concious and can see and hear everything around me, and I cannot respond. As the train that no one else can see gets closer my feelings of terror and dread grows. As the train passes group of teenagers wanders in from somewhere and one of the boys in the group takes a picture of me laying on the ground because I am so unresponsive and pale that he thinks I am dead. He and his friends are laughing about all the damn homeless kids in the area but the children get defensinve and chase off the teenagers afterwards by ganging up and throwing rocks and debris. As the teens run off the ghost train hits the broken bridge and crashes into the river below, taking half of the bridge with it. I can see, hear and feel everything and it is so overwhelming that I feel like my soul is being extinguished by the terrifying experience. Though the other children could not see or hear the train approaching it suddenly becomes real to them as it crashes into the bridge and they all flee in terror from the twisting metal and train cars piling up on one another under the bridge.

My eyes finally close and I think I pass out or die from fright but I can still hear and feel the train crashing into the river. When what seems like an eternity of the ground violently shaking and the sound of screaming metal finally passes and I open my eyes and can finally move my body again. My friends and some other children are gathered around me trying to wake me up and they want to know why I passed out. I look around and the train is gone and the bridge is back to the way it was before the crash. The night is quiet and still and there is no evidence that there was a train at all. My friends said that I was playing under the scafforlding when I suddenly passed out and they could not wake me for several minutes. Though there is now no train or any physical evidence of it I know my experience of it was real because the memory of it is so vivid in my mind and the numbing terror that I felt is still lingering in my heart and body.

There is a bit more to this dream, something about riding the tops of cars around town, stealing food, and three fire engines driving off or crashing into the broken train bridge, but the details have become to blurred and I cannot remember them.